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The Web of Trust, Day One
Today I attended the first day of #RebootingWebOfTrust and I'm exhausted. This is Christopher Allen's design shop to kickstart the next generation of decentralized trust technologies.
Here's what I learned.
BART Sucks. It's been a long time since I took BART during rush hour, and I'm pretty shocked by how jaw-droppingly horrible it's become. The train was almost 20 minutes late in the morning due to "a police matter at the Plaza", and that was unshocking. It seems like about 1 in 3 times I ride BART nowadays, there's a notable delay.
However, the absolutely jammed trains were surprising. Very tight standing room only all the way from Berkeley to Embarcadero. Coming back was even worse, though I got a seat that time, because I was bright enough to walk up to the Civic Center before boarding. (Boy does Market Street go to Hell between Powell and Civic Center.) By the time we got to Embarcadero they needed those Japanese workers who cram people onto trains. (The driver eventually had to tell people to get back and wait for the next train.)
BART literally should be running twice as many trains during rush hour as they are, from what I saw.
Decentralized Trust People Rock. The workshop was a collection of people who were not just smart, but nice, and able to work in groups. I was astounded by how low the ego was for these top-class security and privacy folks. They were happy to listen to peoples' ideas and really think about them before producing a collaborative work that everyone contributed to. Co-operative work is often hard, because people take over groups, and though there were certainly leaders, they weren't controllers to the same extent.
San Francisco is a Nice Place to Visit … The conference room for the workshop was up on the 23rd floor of Three Embarcadero Center in the Financial District, and it's got an absolute stunning panoramic view. You could see the whole Bay, from the Golden Gate Bridge in the north to the Bay Bridge in the south, and even the Richmond Bridge off in the distance. The Marin Headlands, Angel Island, Alcatraz, Treasure Island, every bit of it was visible … and very clear thanks to the rain we had yesterday.
But on the way back to BART I was reminded of why I'm happy I don't live in San Francisco. Because the streets were just jam-packed from Embarcadero to Powell or so, reminding me that SF (unlike Berkeley) is a real city. Then you start hitting the edges of the Tenderloin, and the crowds clear out, but what's left isn't that pleasant.
So, beautiful city, ugly city.
Security & Privacy Are Fun. There are a lot of fun topics under discussion. Stuff related to reputation and trust, PKIs and decentralization. Though I find this sort of all-day-around-people sort of thing very exhausting in and of itself, the topics were something that kept me interested. I'm looking forward to seeing the papers that come out of this.
One more day in San Francisco tomorrow.
Here's what I learned.
BART Sucks. It's been a long time since I took BART during rush hour, and I'm pretty shocked by how jaw-droppingly horrible it's become. The train was almost 20 minutes late in the morning due to "a police matter at the Plaza", and that was unshocking. It seems like about 1 in 3 times I ride BART nowadays, there's a notable delay.
However, the absolutely jammed trains were surprising. Very tight standing room only all the way from Berkeley to Embarcadero. Coming back was even worse, though I got a seat that time, because I was bright enough to walk up to the Civic Center before boarding. (Boy does Market Street go to Hell between Powell and Civic Center.) By the time we got to Embarcadero they needed those Japanese workers who cram people onto trains. (The driver eventually had to tell people to get back and wait for the next train.)
BART literally should be running twice as many trains during rush hour as they are, from what I saw.
Decentralized Trust People Rock. The workshop was a collection of people who were not just smart, but nice, and able to work in groups. I was astounded by how low the ego was for these top-class security and privacy folks. They were happy to listen to peoples' ideas and really think about them before producing a collaborative work that everyone contributed to. Co-operative work is often hard, because people take over groups, and though there were certainly leaders, they weren't controllers to the same extent.
San Francisco is a Nice Place to Visit … The conference room for the workshop was up on the 23rd floor of Three Embarcadero Center in the Financial District, and it's got an absolute stunning panoramic view. You could see the whole Bay, from the Golden Gate Bridge in the north to the Bay Bridge in the south, and even the Richmond Bridge off in the distance. The Marin Headlands, Angel Island, Alcatraz, Treasure Island, every bit of it was visible … and very clear thanks to the rain we had yesterday.
But on the way back to BART I was reminded of why I'm happy I don't live in San Francisco. Because the streets were just jam-packed from Embarcadero to Powell or so, reminding me that SF (unlike Berkeley) is a real city. Then you start hitting the edges of the Tenderloin, and the crowds clear out, but what's left isn't that pleasant.
So, beautiful city, ugly city.
Security & Privacy Are Fun. There are a lot of fun topics under discussion. Stuff related to reputation and trust, PKIs and decentralization. Though I find this sort of all-day-around-people sort of thing very exhausting in and of itself, the topics were something that kept me interested. I'm looking forward to seeing the papers that come out of this.
One more day in San Francisco tomorrow.